Chris Brady | Managing Director
Acro Aircraft Seating | United Kingdom

After training with British Airways Chris joined Virgin Atlantic in 1990 as an engineer, but moved into marketing in 1993.  When he left in 2000 he was General Manager Product Development responsible for innovation across the entire passenger experience from aircraft livery, uniforms, lounges, drive through check in, in-flight entertainment and seats.  In 1997 Virgin entered into a joint venture with Reynard Motorsport to create a seat manufacturer to develop Virgin’s first lie-flat beds; Chris was the Managing Director of Reynard Aviation at its inception until he recruited a management team to run it.

In early 2000 Chris left Virgin to co-found FlightStore a centre capital backed in-flight entertainment software business that provided online shopping via seatback TV.  After leaving this business in 2003 he began working with Acro’s other two founders, Andy Lawler, whom he had met at Reynard Aviation and Dave Starkey who had been a colleague of Andy’s on and off for 15 years to help them develop an opportunity in electric actuators for first and business class aircraft seats. 

In 2006 Dave, Andy and Chris began thinking about an economy seat for low cost carriers and from this Acro Aircraft Seating was born.  8 years later Acro has more than 30,000 seats flying with 20 airlines on wide and narrow body aircraft across the US and Europe and continues to grow from its base in the UK.